The path

The path.

We arrive not a moment too soon, or a moment too late yet just at the right time to a path in front of us that may be devoid of clarity. It is covered with the dust of doubt, and littered with the stones of burdensome concerns. It may not be fully lit with the ideas of purpose. Yet the path is there for the discovery. When the clock strikes the appointed hour we awaken with the need to sweep away doubt. We have the urge to pave those concerns and ignite the candle of self compassion and light our way. 

The path may feel cold and distant yet all it requires is the first step to begin the journey. It has been said that any journey of a 1000 steps begins with the first. This journey requires the first step to be initiated by letting go of a 1000 fears. A seemingly daunting task yet undertaken easily with gratitude and love. 

Embracing all that is contradictory, and engaging all that feels vulnerable and  brooming away all the resentments of self is the invitation that this path holds out for you. In doing so the aliveness of your heart lights this road to a new destination. The unknown is pregnant with possibility as you move on this path.   

The fog of illusion that envelopes our path  is easily dispelled with hope and resolution of a magic that has yet to be performed. 

Love is the path. Love is the path of infinite possibilities. Love is the only thing we have to remember to begin our adventure. 

an emotional photographic tale

An emotional photographic tale

I recently glanced at a picture that was taken. I would love to meet the photographer one day and ask what they felt and what they did after the truth was told. It was a simple black and white picture of a mother, clothed in poverty standing at a relatively modern looking subway station in front of a stopped train holding a sleeping child. It was quite touching and my heart felt saddened and soft for this heart felt picture. A poor woman having to carry her very small child because perhaps she could not afford the luxuries of modern transport and so had to go by foot. 

This was not the story. Underneath I read the investigative report. She was a poor woman indeed. Yet the child she was carrying was dead. She has been the victim of gang rape a few hours earlier and her child was murdered in the process. She had covered up her child with dignity yet had no way to return home so was in midst of traveling back to her village. The shame of rape only heightened by the loss of her child and the holding back of her tears for the sake of embarrassment or perhaps preserving the modicum of strength left in her to simply take her and her deceased child home. 

What did this evoke in me? Initially solemn sadness of a tale of poverty coupled with the tenderness of a mother and child. A picture says a 1000words, but it does not paint the entire story. I was emotionally turned to a gut wrenching nausea and anger with the apparent violation and immediate anger and the need for justice against the perpetrators. It has taken me a long time to wrestle with this turbulence of emotional unrest. Yet these sort of atrocities happen daily through out the world yet is rarely publicized. 

There is no easy soft way to go through emotional suffering. It must pass like waves of sea sickness. In the end my anger rested on the shores of understanding of the love of a mother and child and not in the fiery hatred of the violators of crimes. What was done, was done and the past cannot be undone. The queasiness will never go away, nor should it. The message is that human emotion in all its spectrums must be experienced and therefore known and it is in the unfolding we become who we were always meant to be, spiritual beings having a limited human experience.